How to Mount a Scope the Right Way

[Music] hey folks gary here with paramount tactical your source for guns gear training tactics all brought to you by real world experience so in today's video we're going to cover scope mounting and it's really important that you know how to mount your own scopes that you do mount your own scopes because i can tell you folks almost 100 of the guns that come to our courses that have been mounted by a gunsmith all of them have a lot of camp built into them and it causes a lot of issues and long-range shooting is all about getting rid of the variables we need to make sure that this gun is set up correctly so that way when we're out there shooting if if there's misses taking place good or bad right whether there's good good events taking place or bad events taking place we know that it's the shooter and not the equipment so we need to make sure that this equipment is set up correctly so this isn't this isn't a factor and that's what it's all about and i'm telling you right now folks if you're not mounting your scope it's not done correctly just like the saying goes if you want something done right you got to do it yourself and that is definitely true when it comes to mounting the scope this is not a complicated process but it does take some attention to detail it helps to have some specific equipment which we'll go over there's basically four steps of this process number one is determining the location on the rail and within the rings themselves based on eye relief i'm gonna show you how to do that number two is making sure that you get the gun level number three is getting the optic level and plumb inside the mount itself and number four is making sure that the gun and the optics stay level through that entire process and that's actually one of the hardest parts of this this is actually the second time i shot this video the first time that i shot this video i got so wrapped up in the mechanics of just talking about how to mount the scope itself i left out making sure that you set the gun up in the optic up based on your eye relief so i wanted to redo this and correct it the other reason i wanted to redo this video was to address why i don't use other methods there's a couple other methods that you can use we call it the plumb bob method and the flashlight method i don't use those methods because they're terrible methods they almost guarantee that you're going to introduce additional can't either between the gun itself or the optic yourself now just so we're i'm not going to go into the flashlight method because very similar to the plumb bob method but basically you take a plumb bob and to do it right you need to set your plumb bob out at distance like 40 50 yards and now we have a plumb bobble you know weight on the end of a string that's hanging down and gravity is holding that plum bob perfectly straight that string perfectly straight now what you got to do is you got to set your gun up you got to get it level based on the position of the plumb bob which is very hard to do and then you set the optic in there and now we're using the fact that that plumb bob is straight up and down we're looking through the optic and we're trying to get lined up with that string and folks we got to move the gun again we got to do this we're looking through there any process where you're trying to look through the optic and then just get this thing mounted up because even as you start to torque down on your scope rings that tends to torque over one way or the other the optic itself it's almost impossible to keep the gun and the optic level through that entire process using the plumb bob method folks i've been doing this for almost 20 years i was a sniper team leader with the initial push into iraq in 2003. later on i became a special forces weapons sergeant i have hundreds and hundreds of hours of formal training on weapons themselves as well as a lot of experience multiple combat deployments even past that uh and i've been doing this for a really long time i've mounted hundreds and hundreds of optics and i'm telling you the the method that i'm getting ready to show you is by far the easiest and most consistent method and it will guarantee success the other methods they sound good in theory i'm telling you once you do them a few times you'll see that you're introducing a lot of different variables that you don't want to do so anyways enough about that let's get right into this all right so let's get into the tools and equipment that's going to make this job a lot easier for you so the first thing i recommend is the wheeler engineering uh reticle leveling system folks especially this the specialized barrel level that you can mount on here it keeps that gun level it ensures that you keep the gun level throughout the entire process which is the hardest part of of making sure that you mount that scope correctly we're going to show you how to use this this makes life a lot easier the other item is this tipton ultra gun vise folks i have used a lot of gun vices through the years i have like three more sitting around here this is the only one i use now it just makes life so much easier uh it's easy to use it's sturdy it's heavy duty it articulates in many different ways i'm telling you get you one of these the other thing is the fix it sticks the worx tool kit i have a whole video on this kit folks i can't recommend this enough this makes not only this job easy but anytime that you're working on your firearms or really this is just a great toolkit i bring this with me when i travel it's just a great toolkit overall it's something that's going to last you a lifetime and it makes this process along with many other gunsmithing processes a lot easier so get you one of those and then lastly this fiber type vc3 thread locker this is specifically designed to engineers for firearms it never hardens so it stays malleable but it's still you know kind of gluing together those fasteners even under recoil but it never hardens it never cracks never breaks unlike loctite which starts to harden after a while and will start to come loose loctite doesn't handle up well to recoil this does what's also great about this because it never quite hardens and it's holding those fasteners tight even if you undo these fasteners out in the field and you put them back together it will still work so you know loctite if you un do that fastener it's no good you got to reapply this you can use multiple times so you can fasten it and unfasten it and it's still going to work right so perfect for firearms and i recommend that now i have all four of these items down in the description below go down to the video description you can pick up these individually from our store but we've also put together a discounted scope mounting bundle where you get all four of these items together in one discounted bundle it's sent directly to you and we appreciate the business so go check that out and while we're talking about it these videos are almost free they're not 100 free all they cost you is to stop what you're doing go hit that subscribe button hit the like button on this video throw a comment down below and hit that bell icon so you can see when we put out more content like this we really appreciate the support it doesn't cost you anything right there it just takes you a couple seconds to do that and really helps us out so thank you so we can continue to put out great content like this all right so the first thing that we're going to do is use our wheeler level and we're going to get this gun level now we don't necessarily have to get this gun level up and down this way but i like to do it anyhow so we're going to go ahead and knock that out all right so as you can see now we got that level i'm gonna make sure this is nice and tight all the way around all right now most importantly we need to get this level left and right so we will get it pretty close on the front there and folks what's great about this as this tightens down we can actually manipulate this bubble so as i i'm tightening this side down it moves the bubble one way and i'm tightening this side down it moves the bubble the other way we continue until we know this thing is in there rock solid and it's perfectly level boom all right so now we got this level so this gun is level the problem is we're going to remove this level and as we start to manipulate this gun we're going to knock it out of being plumb right we're going to it's not going to be level so we need a way to make sure that we are monitoring that we are maintaining this this this rifle being level and that's what's great about this kit so now that we have that level what we're going to do is we're going to take this barrel level out now i'm going to put this on the end of the barrel we're going to tighten those back up so once that's on there nice and tight i get it generally level but it also has a screw here that allows us to kind of dial it in right now i'm going to double check to make sure that see we've already knocked this out of level just a little bit we're level again all right so now i'm going to make sure that this matches that so this is nice and tight now i'm just going to dial this little screw to where our bubble is dead center right there so now this level is level this level indicates level we're good to go so now i can remove this and then we can start working on setting up our optic the optic that we're going to be mounting today is the razer hd gen 2. a beautiful optic just kind of show you guys this let me get this out all right we got the vortex rings the precision series rings these are excellent rings and we actually will also be mounting this anti-cant device uh he actually has two of them he has one for the rail and one for the optic itself these are kind of tricky to mount i usually recommend these rail mounted ones it just makes life a lot easier and i think it gives a cleaner look overall too especially when you're putting in the case all right so let's get our rings out i'm gonna take these apart so now that we got the rings out and we have them on the gun itself just the bases of the rings on the rail itself all we are is at step one and that is determining the position of the optic both with on the gun itself but also within the rings themselves and this is based on eye relief now what we're going to do is we're going to get behind this gun it's actually this is one of those things you can do either prior to leveling or after 11 it doesn't really matter but we've got to get it close now the thing is is that with a picatinny rail because if we need to move it forward or back one little space it doesn't matter that much but i relief you have to get behind the gun and you got to get rid of all the black or the vignetting that's going on with this and make sure that it's the right distance from your eye because if it's not the right distance from your eye you won't ever get a clear open image right so you'll have some kind of shadowing around the edges what we call vignetting but when you get in the right spot all right it'll be an open and clear image and that's what we're looking to do so we got to determine that now again with a picatinny rail we can move that back forward once we get it mounted that's not big of a deal where it matters a lot more is unlike these traditional guns where i installed a picatinny rail here but a lot of these you'll have one little spot where the rings themselves mount to so you got to get it perfectly right there uh as you're mounting it you can't take this off and move it back or forward now this is not the gun that's going on so i'm not going to worry that much about it i'm going to get this close knowing that we can take this optic off he can put it on his rifle if he needs to move that forward or back one or two spaces not that big a deal all right so based on our relief and just generally how this is set up i like the position in relation to the scope itself of these scope ring bases right here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to loosen this up because i just basically put them on there just put a little half turn on it so it wouldn't go anywhere but now what i'm going to do is i'm going to make sure that i push these rings forward anytime that you are tightening something to a picatinny rail you want to push that forward before you tighten it up that way it compensates for potential recoil if it's recoiling what it'll do is if it's they're back some it'll start to shift those rings forward or anything that you're mounting to picatinny rail a little bit of slack in there it'll shift it forward so we're going to push those up against the front of that rail so that way it's not going to move on us now again i'm just tightening this down i'm probably putting i don't know maybe 20 inch pounds of force on there this has a torque rating which i will look up i don't need to tighten the base down to torque specs because all we're doing is using this rifle and this picatinny rail to mount the scope we're going to take this off we're going to give him the scope already mounted in the rings so that he can put it on his picatinny rail all right so we have our scope ring bases uh installed on the rail just snugged up and now all we're going to do is just generally place our optic all right and we're going to get it centered up on this uh the two body itself now that is not essential that it's centered up on this two by there's been many times where just the the way that the the optic uh the mounts and the gun especially on ars where you gotta mount it way forward on a on a cantilever uh mount sometimes you do have to you know slide this way forward or possibly way back that's okay it's not that big of a deal if we can get it generally in the center that gives us the most amount of play back and forth if we need to move this now i've already removed the screws from my rings but i'm going to put my ring the tops of my rings on here get those set up and now all i'm going to do is apply a little vibrate we're just applying a small amount to the bottom third or so now the direction of this says to apply the vibrate about 10 to 30 minutes before you actually tighten down the fasteners that just gives a little bit of time to cure now while we're waiting for the vibrate to cure let's talk about something that comes up a lot and that is lapping your scope rings number one if you don't know what that is don't worry about it just keep following the instructions and carry on if you are concerned about lapping the rings folks you don't need to worry about it with modern good scope rings uh the machining on that is so precise that this is going to be more circumferential this is going to be perfectly circular and it's more circumferential than whatever you're trying to lap it with it is not something you need to worry about so uh again don't worry about lapping your rings if you do lap your rings you're probably going to cause more harm than you're doing good so don't do it so it's been about 10 minutes so we're going to start working on getting the scope level and getting it tightened down because right now as you can see it's just kind of moving around so we're going to start off two screws catacomb from one another all right i'm going to start tightening this screw and the screw and what i'm doing is number one applying a little pressure to the optic itself so that it's just not flopping around i'm also establishing the correct gap that's back here so there's gonna be a small gap between the top and the bottom ring we want that gap to be even on both sides that way it's applying pressure evenly across both sides so we're going to we're going to do that we're just going to start very slightly tightening this down and establishing that gap we're not putting any real major pressure but i do want to get this gap even on both sides we can still move this optic a little bit of pressure on it now all right so right now the gap looks even it's still not tight i can still move it but it's not flopping around and i've established the correct gap on both sides now what we're going to do is we're going to take our level and we're going to place it right on top of our turret cap folks these turret caps are perfectly level again precision machined you don't worry about it that comes up a lot folks this is level all right now on some of the cheaper scopes i have seen where there is a protrusion on the top where you might have to remove that that tert cap to find basically place it across the top of that turret itself but again that's something that does come up now i'm going to make sure that we're still level over there we have moved this ever so slightly i'm adjusting this and just by tightening one of this back here i can manipulate this bubble it's canting that rifle ever so slightly back and forth so i'm making sure that we are perfectly level there and now i'm gonna get this level up here that right there is perfectly level and again i'm still even where i want to be over here and now i'm just going to start tightening this down now you'll notice as you tighten these down a lot of times that will start to move the optic and it will come out a level so you got to pay attention to that which is another reason why going back to the plumb bob method is just a terrible method all together and the same goes for the flashlight method using using that plumb bob method it's really impossible to make sure that you're keeping your gun level as well as the scope level uh because you're basing everything off of having to look through the optic at a plumb bob that's 40 50 yards down and i haven't talked about the wind blowing a lot of times the wind will start blowing your plum bob will start swaying trust me it's a nightmare don't don't use the point ball method the the near side over here a little i've lost my gap so i'm going to tighten this down just a quarter of a turn i'm going to loosen this side up a quarter of a turn until i get my gap all right now we're good see now i've come out of level so we're gonna just tap this ever so slightly all right and i never crank down on this i'm just going back and forth literally an eighth of a turn at a time that'll keep us from putting too much torque on one side or the other all right yep there we go all right so now i got some tension on both sides my gap is good on both sides and now i can just tighten down the other two screws and there again all i'm gonna do is take the slack out of these two screws i'm gonna tighten it down to where we hit some resistance and i'm gonna do the same thing i'm gonna go back and forth back and forth just slowly taking tightening those up and never putting more tension on one screw than the other so i haven't met resistance yet all right there's a little bit of resistance i'm going to give this an eighth of a turn and that eighth of a turn just to snug that down so now we got the back tightened up same thing with the front we're still level i'm going to go ahead we're still level up front all i'm doing now is establishing our gap making sure our gap is uniform on both sides between the top and the bottom rings all right i've hit some resistance i'm going to go ahead and our gap is good do the same with the other two screws i hit resistance all right everything looks good over there so now that i got everything snugged down nothing's moving again i'm just going to check my levels one more time both of those look good according to this placard uh the our scope ring screws should be 18 inch pounds not foot pounds inch pounds now over here we have our 15 inch pound torque limiter so i'm going to use this and we're going to do the same thing i'm just going to start applying about an eighth of a turn in a crisscross pattern never in a hurry i'm going to apply even pressure there we hit the torque limiter on that side hit it on that side here on that side hit it on that side and the same thing with the front ring now this only goes to 15 inch pounds uh you could folks you could leave it right there i'm telling you right now 15 inch pounds would be more than enough what i am going to do is i'm taking that off because it is for 18 inch pounds all right and all i'm going to do is apply another couple inch pounds of pressure on all four screws in each ring and we should be right there at eight about 18. but again if you don't feel comfortable doing that if you left it at 15 then trust me that is a sufficient amount of torque to keep this rifle and optic in place all right that looks good all right everything looks good there so now we have that snug down that's good to go if i was leaving this optic on this gun we would also torque down our base screws which we'll go ahead and do just for demonstration purposes and and i could have done it at the beginning right earlier when we snugged them down we went ahead and snugged them down to the full torque specs uh according to this the torque specs on this are 45 to 50 inch pounds right here we have a 45 inch pound torque limiter we'll grab and we will use that and there again i'm going to go to the front and back just start to tighten those down then the middle two all right there we go that's the back that's the front that's the back middle that's the front middle all right now those are torqued down to 45 inch pounds we got those in spec later on we're just going to take this off i'll give it to the other client he'll build a mounted and there again because he's mounted on a picatinny rail on the tkt3 that he's mounting this to he'll be able to use his picatinny rail and move forward or back and get the right eye relief for him folks there is a quite a bit of play there's probably you know an inch to an inch and a half usually to get the right focal length for eye relief so you got enough play in there so he'll be able to go forward or back a couple of uh notches on his picatinny rail to get it just right for him so not a big deal there all right so again we're checking to make sure we we've kind of moved the whole gun right there is even centered centered we're good to go now the other thing that we're going to install is this anti-camp device all right this is the type of anti-camp device that goes on the scope body so while we have our levels here we're going to go ahead and use those to mount this up and uh i'm not a big fan of these ones that amount to the scope body for a couple different reasons number one they're very hard to install you'll see this kind of a pain in the butt but on top of that they get bumped very easily i had this type on all of our student guns and then i started checking them and almost after every class i would check them i put a level and check them just by the way that they're designed the way they mount on there it's easy for them to get unlevel essentially so you got to check them regularly but anyways we'll go ahead and mount this same thing we'll go ahead and unscrew this these screws we're going to apply some more vibrate to these as well all right we apply some viper tight we'll give those about 10 minutes we'll come back and install those all right so it's been about 10 minutes now as a right-handed shooter you want to make sure that the the bubble level portion of this is on the left side of your optic that way you can look through the scope with your dominant eye and keeping your left eye open you're just glancing over and making sure that your scope and your gun are perfectly level and you're not introducing any cant in there all right so we will put this on this one i'm saying it's kind of a pain to actually mount these especially when we start installing that other screw and this is the same thing you're going to want to make sure that you're maintaining a gap a uniform gap on both sides now i'm just getting the thread started on each side there again i'm kind of making sure trying to make sure that the gap is even on both sides all right so i got the thread started on both screws i got the gap pretty much even on both sides i'm going to loosen this one screw and now we're just going to start leveling that thing out and there again because of the way these screws are set as i torque that down it kind of shifts it one way and as i torque this down it'll kind of shift it the other way so you got to tighten them evenly or you'll kind of throw it out of sync so right now that bubble's level that bubble's level this bubble's level we're good to go and as long as i tighten this evenly and don't displace this thing we'll be good to go on this guy too so i'm going to do the same thing with this as i did with the other screws is we're going to go ahead and use this 15 inch pound torque limiter and torque this down and make sure that we have even torque on all sides so there again i'm doing this evenly and just playing a little bit like a tenth or eighth of a turn every single time so that's even we got the we got it torqued to spec we're good to go there now i want you to notice where i mounted this i mounted this here now if you were a left-handed shooter you would mount this upside down to where it would be on this side right so this bubble level would be at the lower side of that but you'll be able to see with your right eye as a left-handed shooter and notice i mounted it right here i didn't mount it up here for a reason this if i had it here it would actually block my view or my ability to look at what i'm doing with my parallax i also didn't mount it up here because if it was up there from down here to there all right it would obscure my view as a right-handed shooter so there again i'm actually i mounted it here for a reason all right so you saw how that device was a little bit of a challenge to install uh again the other big problem with this is that because of the leverage in the way that they end up sitting in the case or just out in the field it's easy to hit these and they will shift on you which they're again it makes them kind of useless so not the biggest fan of these types of anti-canned devices the ones that we recommend are these us optics link for these are down in the description below so go check that out i'm gonna show you how how quick and easy these to install but also just the kind of they're kind of failure proof if you will so i'm gonna go ahead and turn this around we'll take this off this is the device that we have right here we have this loosened up right here is our bubble level i'll show you that a little bit more detail all right so to install this all we have is a rail clamp right so we're just going to loosen this set screw right here all right i'm going to pull this piece of that rail clamp back and i can install this up here all right forward of the first ring i can actually install it behind the second ring it really doesn't matter just for the sake of demonstration we're going to put this right here and this is actually the clients as well he has both of these all right so all we're going to do is tighten that down there again i will use my torque limiter all right we got that set to 15 inch pounds all right and that's how easy that is to install now we have our cap right here that we have like that now that's sticking way out there it's great that just folds up and we have a very low profile so when we're ready to use it we're ready to go and there again you can kind of see hopefully you can see that right there but as because we displaced this whole gun but as we get that centered all right that's center our bubble on the end of our barrel of center so this matches that that matches that we're good to go all right so i just like these a lot better they're easy to throw on easy to take off and then they just fold out of the way so really cool device i like those a lot well there you go folks that's how you precision mount your optic to your rifle and it's not that complicated right you need a few pieces of equipment you need to be able to take some time have some patience and be very meticulous about how you go about doing this but that gives you peace of mind so that you know it's done right and when you're out there and you're troubleshooting you know that the mount is not one of the issues you can take that off the table and you start working through and troubleshooting other issues so again i hope that was helpful i hope that was informative and you know while guns and gear is always great what we're really about is training so make sure you go to paramount tactical.com go check out our upcoming training schedule we'd love to have you out if you're interested in long-range shooting go check out our long-range courses we have coming up we'd love to have you come out we're going to teach you everything that you need to know from internal external and terminal ballistics so that you can put rounds on target and you'll be shooting farther than you ever imagined we also offer courses in tactical carbine defensive handgun and our medical courses make sure you go check out our online store everything in there are items we've tested we personally use and we actually believe in and listen we really appreciate you watching this channel we we appreciate all the support from our subscribers if you're not subscribed make sure you do so hit that like button hit the bell notification and make sure you comment down below if there's something i forgot or left out or something you'd like me to cover in the future make sure you leave that comment down below and i'll make sure i read that and respond to it also our patreon link is down below if you'd like to support us in that manner we'd really appreciate that as well but until next time stay armed stay ready and we'll talk to you [Music] soon right now i don't know if i'll ever [Music]

Channel: Paramount Tactical

Views: 264,884

Keywords: Scope, Mounting Scope, How To, Optics, Precision

Id: wgn6ejQzcL0

Length: 27min 58sec (1678 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2022